Oranges and tangerines are in season and set the stage for the gift of rich, quality, healthy foods that are at a premium in most countries throughout the world. Stuffing everyone’s stocking by placing a specially chosen orange in the toe can become a cherished Christmas tradition that reminds everyone of the blessing of good bounty.

Many years ago I began a family tradition of putting an orange in the toe of each Christmas stocking; and, you know, the one Christmas I completely forgot, the entire family was disappointed. Everyone wanted to know where their orange was. These simple gifts of an orange give Christmas a meaning beyond the excited unwrapping of toys and clothes.

We are in a unique time where austerity must become a family value. A simple tangerine or two in a stocking reminds us of the significant value a hot meal on the table can give beyond any DVD, X-box, electronic doll, new television or jewelry. Food speaks to us in warm and spiritual ways. When we join family and friends at the table and give a moment of gratitude for being with those who care about us and us about them, true charity begins. The orange in the stocking is an outward sign of an inward sense that others are not so fortunate. It creates the question, “What can I do to help ease the pain and give warmth to another if only for a brief few hours?”

The significance of the orange reminds us of what is truly important—our health, our family, our children to whom we are passing tradition and our love and appreciation for the good in the world. Long before the age of materialism and excess dominated commercials on television, gifts of food in all its forms was the most anticipated gift of any. It is time to re-evaluate what is truly important. With so many wondering where they will be for Christmas this year as they look inside their empty wallets, countless are wondering if they can make it to spring. More families than ever before are living in cars and trucks because they have lost their homes. Children are getting ready for school in gas station or Walmart bathrooms. When so many are going hungry food as a gift is not just real and practical, it can bring true joy even if just for a day. Are you wondering what you can do to make a difference? Give of yourself and the bounty that surrounds you. Give food for health and become the wealth for another. You can be the beginning of change.

*Next week I’ll be sharing where you can go or what you can do to make a difference this holiday season.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can. Just copy in its entirety with this blurb below.

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Look for her at http://www.Savage.TeamAsea.com, She is an Asea distributor that can be followed on twitter @louannsavage and joined on Facebook.com/louannsavage.

Sleeping is a working activity of rest for your body and is vital to long-term good health. Brain and body functions stay active throughout sleep. And sleep is tied to a series of brain waves that create electrical activity within the brain. Connected to this activity is the healthy response our body’s cells have to a 24-hour sleep cycle. It is called a circadian rhythm and it is a critical component to overall wellbeing.

Before Thomas Edison’s invention, people relied upon the sun to give us our work and rest hours. Then the light bulb changed that. Today, being in touch with the world 24/7 presents serious challenges for getting quality sleep and keeping fit. With the life we lead today comes more responsibility and demands. There is no natural clock that we follow. We push and push thinking we will catch our rest up on the weekend and, yet, the weekend is packed with soccer, football, shopping for the coming week, laundry, housecleaning and countless household and family responsibilities. This leads to running on adrenalin. The next thing you know, your sleep is the first to go. If I have described you, then ask yourself this, “Do I have a desire to fall on my desk for a mini-power nap on a regular basis?” If the answer is, yes, you are likely sleep deprived.

Attached to this newsletter is my holiday gift to you, a brief guide on Healthy Sleeping. It is a short version of the ebook from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. If you would like the longer version, please email me and I will send it to you. I hope this to be a valuable resource for you and your family as we go into high gear for this holiday season.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can. Just copy in its entirety with this blurb below.

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Look for her at http://www.Savage.TeamAsea.com, She is an Asea distributor that can be followed on twitter @louannsavage and joined on Facebook.com/louannsavage.

The Washington Post’s Anne Holmes wrote a simply divine column yesterday [Nov. 23, 2011] on the repercussions of the Thanksgiving eating experience and it comes down to this. We are losing sight of what Thanksgiving is really about. We seem to either eat too much and hate ourselves after or we start shopping at insane hours through the night based upon the addiction factor merchants use to get us into their store at the most ridiculous hours imaginable. Either way, Thanksgiving, if we don’t step back and look at what is truly important, has become more about craziness than gratitude. The woman at a Walmart in California who resorted to pepper spray as insurance to get one of a limited quantity of something she couldn’t live without speaks to this truth.

I propose that we each take some time in the years to come and put Thanksgiving into perspective…the perspective of what it is really about. Seriously, we have enough stressors in our life without putting shopping at the head of the line which leads me into why my article is late getting to you.

I was preparing my vegetable dish for a Thanksgiving dinner with newfound friends while the task was being interrupted with video Skype phone calls from children, grandchildren and friends that meant more to me than any deadline. It had been a hectic week and a hard one at that. For me, It was the first time ever that every member of my family was thousands of miles away—all of them. And it was also a time that I needed to step back and count my blessings. God love the video phone calls. It’s the next best thing to being there and it was this that slowed me down and made me think about the gift of Thanksgiving. Of thinking how foolish we are to put shopping at midnight ahead of humanness.

So my apologies to you on one hand and my hope for you on the other that you had a great time on turkey day without the self-loathing that can go along with overeating or the pressure of going shopping. Believe me, after eating a plate of three different kinds of pie piled high with whipped cream and waddling to the car feeling like I’d never get out of the jeans I had on, I knew in my heart tomorrow would work out alright and instead of the mall, I’d go home and be grateful for my blessings.

Until next year, join with me and let’s all be glad for what we have and save the ‘wants’ for a different time. Thank you to each of you for your support and kindness through the years. May life be kind to you always.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can. Copy in its entirety and include the blurb below.

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Follow her on twitter @louannsavage and join her on Facebook.com/louannsavage.

As far back as the 18^th century, descriptions have been published that lend themselves to the condition of autism. Yet, it was not identified as a specific disorder until 1943. Today, we talk, discuss and hope for a way out of autism while the number of cases continues to climb. In the broad category of ASDs are Asperger’s syndrome, Rett’s syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder and childhood disintegrative disorder. Each is determined by many factors but have the same behavioral core. Dr. Pauline Filipek of University of California, Irvine describes ASD in this way, “[Autism] is more like high blood pressure. There are a lot of reasons for [it], but the one common thing across it is that your blood pressure is elevated.”

For parents with a child having one or more of any maladies that fall under the ASD umbrella, a diagnosis of autism is a shock and a tragedy. Not at all unusual, according to the Autism A.L.A.R.M. project, is it for parents of these children to have a ‘sixth’ sense that something is not quite right with their beloved child. Instincts here are a good thing, a very good thing and it is important to trust them and follow them because early intervention has a positive impact.

What form would early intervention take? To start, hydration is very important because the body and brain of a child or teenager has a much higher concentration of water than that of an adult whose water composition is 70%. It pays to consider that if we keep our cell’s filter system as free of toxins as possible, a child with autism could effectively improve his or her overall health. Though there has not been any recommendation for reactive molecules use for children under 12 years of age, a non-toxic supplement now available should be researched for use. It is worth the time to examine. Reactive molecules otherwise known as redox signaling molecules perform a critical function. They seek out defective cells and repair or replace them. With this new supplement, one can increase their own production of enzyme superoxide dismutase [SOD] by 500 times. It is this enzyme that is critical to proper brain functioning. It makes sense for the scientific community to pursue comprehensive research of this element in relation to autism specifically.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can. Just copy in its entirety and include the blurb below.

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Follow her on twitter @louannsavage and join her on Facebook.com/louannsavage.

Triggered by high blood pressure, the condition of hypertension until now has been thought to stay under control, in part, with a reduction in salt consumption. Now, a series of studies challenge that premise and they have some proponents of the salt theory jumping up and down with exasperation claiming salt, indeed, remains a contributing factor.

Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medicine and chair of the World Action on Salt campaign group, may have a heart attack himself from his reaction to this latest report. Needless to say, he sticks by his beliefs and findings compiled in his report of 2011.

Contradictory evidence to Dr. MacGregor’s report comes from the analysis of researchers writing in the American Journal of Hypertension and the Cochrane Library journal a review done by British researchers and published in July 2011. It showed there was no evidence that indicated small reductions in salt intake actually lowered the risk of developing heart disease or prevented premature death. In May 2011, Belgian scientists determined that “people who ate lots of salt were no more likely to get high blood pressure and were statistically less likely to die of heart disease, than those with low salt intake.”

Niels Graudal of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark led this review. He and MacGregor are at odds with one another and strongly disagree. Yet, Dr. Graudal has what would seem stronger results on his side. They showed that when salt intake is reduced, “’…there are increases in some hormones and in fats known as lipids ‘which could be harmful if persistent over time.”

But there is a piece missing. All the researchers and scientists involved in these recent studies are considered to be at the top of their game. They are educated, published and accomplished. Yet they show a lack of knowledge about this important topic in which they claim to be experts. To illustrate, they reduce salt down to a single category of table salt. Today, we know salt comes in many forms from Himalayan, Celtic, Kosher, Sea and iodized to name a few.

As we become more informed about the nutritional value of what we eat, organic salts are getting the recognition for their nutritional attributes they deserve. A movement away from iodized salt is on the rise and a turn to organic salts with no processing and no iodine added are being sought after as a superior salt choice. Salt is a biological necessity. It assists in the balance of sodium and potassium levels by maintaining proper water balance and blood pH. It is also required for stomach, muscle, nerve and cellular function.

Bottom line is this. There is a solid need for salt in our body.  Though this review gives us substantial room for thought, our scientists would benefit from learning a whole lot more about nutrition and factoring it into their hypothesis.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can. Copy in its entirety and include the blurb below.

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Follow her on twitter @louannsavage and join her on Facebook.com/louannsavage.

November 9^th [2011] is EAS Test Time – Emergency Alert System [EAS] is conducting a nationwide test on this day at 2 pm EST. Now don’t be shocked when “The View” turns into a diabolical sounding siren and all TV—network and cable—will shut down. This is the system that gives our President the full range of communication in the event of an emergency.  This is a very good, healthful and beneficial test. Should the system be needed in an emergency, we need to know it is working.

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/emergency-alert-system-nationwide-test

GPS Safety – Did you know that if you twitter where you are leaving from, your SmartPhone tells every follower including no-good crooks in your vicinity or within driving distance that you aren’t at home and it is ripe for the robbing? So word of caution, don’t tweet to all your friends about meeting you at a local pub or that you’ve arrived at your destination. Nor should they tweet back to tell you they are out the door and on their way. Within minutes the health of your home could be stripped of the warmth, privacy and treasures that you enjoy everyday. You don’t know the feeling of being violated until a home robbery takes it from you or you are being tailed by unwanted threatening characters whose motives are less than desirable.

http://vccoordinator.wordpress.com/tag/gps-tracking/

Do Not Call Registry – Tired of those annoying daily telemarketing calls? I sure am. They used to come mostly at the dinner hour. Now they bombard you throughout the day. And what is going to be an even greater annoyance, they are starting to invade our cell phones. Yes, our cell phones, the same instrument that you use for your alarm clock, calculator and Internet news. When it rings or buzzes in the middle of the night, it can make you jump straight out of bed in a fit of disorientation and extreme irritation if not outright anger. It’s called invasion of privacy.

Here’s where you can go to put yourself PERMANENTLY on the DO NOT CALL LIST! It is easy, free and you can do all your phones at the same time. So long telemarketers!

http://www.donotcall.gov

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can. Just copy in its entirety with the resource blurb below included:

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Follow her on twitter @louannsavage and join her on Facebook.com/louannsavage.

Sixty-five million people age 20 or older have prediabetes. In 2007 it was 57 million. By 2050 (that’s only 39 years from now) the CDC estimates the trend of one in nine adults who currently have diabetes will jump to one in three. The old image of heavy and inactive individuals as victims is becoming outdated.

Physically fit women are altering the profile of one who becomes diabetic. Women in their 30s are 1.3 times more likely to be admitted to the hospital for diabetes-related conditions. That’s a dramatic shift. What is more, the National Institutes of Health are telling us that approximately 15 percent of people with type 2 diabetes aren’t at all overweight. Instead they fit a new demographic that Dr. Jimmy Bell, molecular imaging expert, describes as TOFI meaning “thin outside, fat inside.” This happens when fat that you expect to have under your skin where it is visible grabs instead onto abdominal organs deep inside your body. This type of fat is way more serious.

Contributing risk factors

Lack of adequate exercise: College students set the stage. A breakfast skipped and a lunch of Mountain Dew in place of a more healthful one followed by an after class snack of chocolate cake and chips then a dinner of pasta complete with a rare amount of exercise before heading out to a party where alcohol is being served. This is a pattern of behavior heading for disaster.

Yo-yo dieting: Eating healthy for a month or two or three, dropping 10 pounds, then falling back into old patterns and gaining it right back puts you on the road to losing muscle. Betul Hatipoglu, M.D., an endocrinologist at the Cleveland Clinic says, “[E]ach time you regain weight, you gain only fat.” And when you lose muscle mass you lose that which helps you burn visceral fat and the ability to control blood sugar.

Daily stress: Cortisol is a stress hormone responsible for giving you that burst of energy. It is turned on in your system when your mind is under pressure. As it temporarily elevates blood sugar, it becomes a diabetes danger and can mess with fat storage leading to a “spike in visceral blubber.”

Genetic predisposition: According to the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School, new studies are revealing that younger people may be at greater risk of type 2 if one of their relatives who was also lean was diabetic. This is still under review, but it is possible that if both parents have type 2, a woman has a 50% chance of getting it herself. If both parents and a sibling have it, the risk increases four times over.

Possibilities for prevention

An individual DNA with type 2 proclivities has an upside regardless of what the statistics are indicating. With smart lifestyle choices, the disease is nearly 100% preventable. Catching prediabetes early is key. The challenge arises because 93 percent of prediabetics don’t even know they are sick.

Start today getting on a healthy lifestyle track. It is never too late. Eat a strong plant-based diet of which The China Study is the best guide money can buy. Next, begin a pattern of going to bed at the same time each night or close to it, and exercise on a regular basis.  Thirty minutes three times a week is a good start. These three targets set a stage for a better balanced and stronger immune system and internal terrain. All are key to warding off the threats of prediabetes.

Read more at Women’s Health Magazine, November 2011

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can. Just copy in its entirety with this blurb below.

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Look for her at http://www.Savage.TeamAsea.com, She is an Asea distributor that can be followed on twitter @louannsavage. Join her, too, on Facebook.com/louannsavage.

Two weeks ago I wrote on the “number one economic challenge for European health care.” It was about a study on the brain and the myriad disorders that are coming into play around the world.

This past Saturday I was listening to a lecture by Dr.’s Gary Samuelson and Rob Ward on “The Nervous System and Redox Signaling.” It included the brain. The brain is directly connected to the nervous system. From this lecture come specifics as to causes of brain malfunction. In addition to Alzheimer’s disease; depression, anxiety, insomnia, Parkinson’s and a myriad of autoimmune conditions were included.

If you are new to the Health Fit for Life community, you might not know that my mother died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. My mother was the consummate “worrier.” You could see it in her face when she was stressed. She carried each of her children’s and my father’s burdens with her on her shoulders, in her head and throughout her body. When confronted with what had been labeled by her doctors and husband as her “slow blood-flow” in her brain at a seeming healthful age of 76, the tightness in her expression, the outward sign of worry, was even more tragic. She understandably began living a life of fear and terror. And so the interminable spiral down and into her self began. She and we as a family were seeing her world slipping away. It continues to sadden me. And it is for this very reason I must share my experience and whatever I learn with you because her plight must be used for good.

http://tinyurl.com/Samuelson-Ward

If you have a loved one suffering from a brain or nervous system disorder, I urge you to take some time and learn from this lecture and pass it along. It will help you to help them and back again. It is about hope and extraordinary science.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can. Just copy in its entirety with this blurb below.

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Look for her at http://www.Savage.TeamAsea.com, She is an Asea distributor. Follow her on twitter @louannsavage and join her on Facebook.com/louannsavage.

Breast cancer took a turn in thinking back in 2009. This paradigm shift came from Dr. Mina Bissell of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.¹  Her message first came out in a paper handed to a well established scientist with whom she worked who promptly put it into the wastebasket.

Her idea, that gene mutations are only part of the process of cancer while acknowledging that mutations alone are not enough. She says, “Cancer involves an interaction between rogue cells and surrounding tissue.” This thought is a dramatic shift from the cancer gene theory that is relatively basic and simple and up to now predominate in cancer research. Focus on genes rather than isolated cancer cells demands a dramatic mental turn around for researchers who had based their findings on gene mutation alone.

Now, 20 years after Dr. Bissell and a small number of others began to explore this approach, a new perspective on cancer is at long last taking shape as more researchers become open to the cell theory in conjunction with the gene theory.

Not to disparage any of Dr. Bissell’s work, I nonetheless am compelled to say, “What do you think is new here? Otto H. Warburg was onto this approach long ago and now you seek credit as though everything you are looking at is completely new and innovative.”²

In lecture, Nobel laureate Dr. Warburg stated,“Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar.” ³

Called the Warburg effect, in oncology it is the observation that most cancer cells produce energy by a high level of glycolysis with lactate acid secretion and mitochondrial respiration even in the presence of oxygen.

It would appear science has come back from the long detour it took toward gene mutation theory that has been the major focus of cancer cures for the past 40 years. One might look and surmise the path initiated by Dr. Warburg in the 1930s has returned to its track thanks to Dr. Mina Bissell and others like her.

At long last the future of an eradicated cancer is more promising than it ever has been.

¹ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/health/research/29cancer.html?pagewanted=all

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_hypothesis

³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Heinrich_Warburg

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can as long as you include this complete blurb with it:

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Subscribe free at: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com. Look for her at http://www.Savage.TeamAsea.com, Follow her on twitter @louannsavage and join her on Facebook.com/louannsavage.